Interview of Virginia Emrich on her experience running Red Cross recreation clubs in Australia for U.S. troops during WWII. Pt. 1


Virginia Cornett:	This is Virginia Cornett.  I’m the oral history chairper-, chairperson for the Louisville Unit of the Women’s Overseas Service League.  I’m interviewing Virginia Emrich, E-m-r-i-c-h, Emrich.  Today’s date is May 4, 1983.  [0:00:21] Virginia, what braches of service did you serve in?

Virginia Emrich:	I was with the American Red Cross in, uh, club work.

Virginia Cornett:	Okay.  [0:00:31] Um, first, would you like to just give a little, give a little bit of biographical data about yourself?

Virginia Emrich:	Um, I was raised – I was born and raised here in Louisville and went to school, the high school and University of Louisville.  And I was working during the war as a secretary to the graduate division of social administration when across my desk came several brochures from the American Red Cross recruiting, uh, women to go overseas.  And I had a brother who’d already, 1 brother who had already entered the, um, air force as a pilot in China, Burma, and India, and another brother who was a flight surgeon with the air force in England.  So I decided I wanted to get into the war effort, but I didn’t want to be on an assembly line and I chose Red Cross to apply to.

And then, um, I did apply and they accepted my application to the point they said come up to Alexandria, Virginia, for an interview.  And I didn’t tell my present boss where I was going.  I just asked for the time off because I didn’t believe I’d be accepted and I didn’t want to come back hanging my head.  But I spent 1 whole day of interviews up there and, um, they knew more about me when I had finished that I had ever known about myself.  In fact, at the end, at 5:00 when most of the staff was leaving up there, they sat me in the reception hall and asked me to wait and then they would give me their answer to my application.  And when the young lady came to get me to take me back to the office, she pointed out that I was holding up a magazine upside down, which I didn’t even know.  I thought I’d been reading at that time.  But they did accept me, providing I would, um, pass my physical, but I could not stay over for a physical that day.  And they said “Well, we’ll let you go home.  Get a physical, not from your father...”  My father was a physician.  And “…but someone outside of the family.  Send the results to us.”  They had a form they gave me.  “And then we well pass on that.”

I did pass the physical and was notified to come to Washington D.C. on December 13.  Well, I hated that.  It was so close to Christmas.  It was 1943 and I had already planned for Christmas so, um, I begged off.  But no, they said you must come with this group that will be in class soon, so off I went to Washington D.C.  And they put me up at the American University which then was the, uh, operating class or school for orientation to Red Cross girls.  And, um, it was mostly lectures and, um, gave us some idea what to expect, but it really wasn’t very factual.  Uh, we found that out when we got overseas.  It took just practical knowledge to apply on the job after we got there.

But after the 2 weeks and we received our uniforms and had nothing other than theory given to us, I was put in an embassy club in Washington D.C.  The embassy club had been an embassy once upon a time, a big old house.  And the Red Cross girls who were on temporary duty were put there to run it like a club that they might run overseas.  We had to do everything but the cleaning. We had to buy the food, fix the meals.  Also, it was set up as, um, a service club in that certain hours during the day, servicemen just passing by could drop in and we were to treat them the way we would if they had come in to our recreation hall on some base or camp.

Uh, I was there 2 weeks and the furnace broke down, so I had to go back to the campus and they sent me out to Camp Pickett in Blackstone, Virginia, supposedly on temporary duty.  I got down there 2 days and they said “Come on back.  We’re sending you out on assignment.”  So back to Washington I went.  Uh, and they said “You’re going to Europe.”  And I said “I did not ask to go to Europe.  I wanted to go to the Pacific.”  “Well, you’re going to Europe.”  So I went to the East Coast staging area and I was still calling on the telephone and calling headquarters and talking to people and saying no, no, no, I was headed the wrong direction.  Finally, on Saturday, I guess about January 10, something of that sort, they said “Okay, you’re coming back to Washington.”  But my footlocker went to Europe.

And I had some more temporary duty in Washington until finally I headed across country to San Francisco on a train with 40 Red Cross women, men and women both, and, um, we knew, I knew I was headed in the right direction.  We had 4 days in San Francisco in which time we were free but, um, we were told every 4 hours to report back in, in case they decided to ship us out and didn’t know where we were, so we had much freedom and this wonderful sightseeing and, uh, but every 4 hours we did call back.

I spent an awful lot of those 4 days though rolling and re-rolling my bed roll.  It didn’t pass inspection.  Each Red Cross girl was given a bed roll and in that we could put certain items of our clothing, but mine was always too lumpy, too bulky, and just too much of everything it seemed like, so I had rolled, re-rolled, and it went on for days before they really accepted and said “Okay, we’ll ship it out for you now.”

When we did leave from San Francisco and we were told we were going to be taken down in the boat and not to call anybody, not to let any – I had relatives there in Los Angeles that I had been talking to over the telephone, but not to call them.  It’s all very hush, hush.  And we were going out the back part of the hotel, which was the Sir Francis Drake Hotel where they had put us up and, uh, they were going to put us on a bus with the curtain pulled down and everything.  So we went down the, um, supply elevators and down there were the buses parked at the back door, but there also were hundreds of people waving goodbye, goodbye, good luck, so it wasn’t a big secret at all that they tried to tell us it was going to be.

And when we got to the boat, uh, I, I – you’ll laugh at this, but I prayed that – this was long before the job, the serious part, of course.  I prayed that I would faint so that they would carry me on because I was the only one in winter clothing because my suitcase had gone to Europe and in Washington D.C. it was cold and icy.  I had a winter uniform on.  I had a musette bag on 1 shoulder, the regular uniform bag on the other, a carton of records in 1 hand, and a, and a portable typewriter in the other.  And I was loaded down and hot and miserable in San Francisco.  When I got in, we stood in line like everybody else, just stood in line for hours, got up to the checkpoint.  They said “Show me your pass.”  Well, it was on the inside pocket of my coat.  I had to get the tallest girl in line to get on my inside of my coat and pull it out.

We got aboard ship and we were on ship, which was the Matsonia.  And it had been a luxury liner before which went from California to Hawaii, but it was made over into a troop ship.  And I was put into a stateroom that had 6 people in it.  And being one of the smallest, I got one of the top bunks, of course, too.  But I got lucky as time went on because 2 of the, the women in that room got sick and were in the sickbay the whole trip over, so I got one of the lower bunks.  And, uh, actually, we didn’t spend much time in our stateroom because it was over the boiler room and it was both hot and noisy, so.

Um, we were given the freedom of mixing with the officers and during the day we could play games, sit out on the deck with them and such, but only one objection I had.  I had a friend who was not an officer who was aboard that ship.  He was an enlisted man and I was not allowed to go and talk to him.  He was not allowed to come up to the deck where I was.  And I objected to this very much that I didn’t know whom to go to to register this complaint.  But we decided through signaling more or less we’d attend all the religious services on that boat and that way we’d get together and talk and that’s the way we managed it.

Uh, something else that was, which was a first for me.  I was waiting to see the Southern Cross appear at nighttime and they allowed the women to sleep out on deck at nighttime on one side and the men on the other.

Virginia Cornett:	Oh good heavens.

Virginia Emrich:	Only nobody had told me that you got up early in the morning.  If you didn’t, you got hosed down because the navy got out and swabbed the deck, cleaned the deck with their hoses.  And they announced it they said, but I don’t think it was at their loudest because they took great joy the first time in turning the hoses on us.  We all went down below sobbing wet, but we learned and it didn’t happen a second time.

	When we arrived – oh, we were given orders not to open them until we were mid sea, so we opened them.  It said you will go to Sydney, Australia.  Well, fine, the biggest city in Australia.  That’s great.  But we landed instead at Brisbane, Australia.  Why, we never did know.  But, um, we had gone out in convoy when the ship left and it was a very zig zaggy, um, journey and we had, uh, some boats accompanying us partway and then they just disappeared and then we were on our own and somehow or other the boats then left for different destinations and ours went into Brisbane, Australia, where it was quite different to me.  And I might as well have been a foreigner though I spoke English.  They were supposed to speak English too.  But when we got there we didn’t have immediate assignments and we were told to visit as many servicemen clubs as we could find and the type of work being done for servicemen that we might end up doing.

In wandering around Brisbane, I was stopped once by an Australian woman who, who said “Do you have any fashion magazines?  We’d love to have fashion magazines.”  Well, I didn’t have any.  Then another time I was stopped by a, he said he was a reporter.  He had a camera.  He said “What are those things you’re wearing on your head?”  And at the moment I really don’t remember the name of them, but it was a rain, part of our rain gear.

Virginia Cornett:	[0:12:56] Was it was a western Havelock over...?

Virginia Emrich:	Havelock, yeah, to fit over our hats and so he took a picture of, of the 3 of us.  There were 2 other Red Cross girls.  And it did appear in the newspaper over there and we got a copy later on.

Finally, I was assigned to a, a beautiful beach hotel, which the Red Cross had taken over as a club for, uh, the officers of navy and, and air force and infantry, but they came to us on orders for the most part.  They came after a hospital leave or, or they were on a convalescent leave or they came out of battle from some of the islands close by or some such thing as that.  There were a few men who came regularly because they worked in MacArthur’s headquarters, which he was based in Brisbane at that time.  And these men had access to come to the club because we did have a dining room.  We served meals.  We were – had our own private beach.  Uh, we had all – we had a music room.  We had facilities like a country club.  It was just set up beautifully there.  And I was a staff assistant, which was the lowest of the low at that time, and I d-, I did everything literally and I loved it.  Uh, it got kind of hard.  I didn’t know how to do a lot of things, but I learned because it was expected of me.

There was another installation about 3 miles down the coast at, um, Southport, Australia, and our 2 staffs got together, our 2 Red Cross staffs got together once a week and made out the recreational program for the men.  We tried not to duplicate anything so that the men staying at 1 club installation would participate in what we had up in Southport and what was going on down in Surfers Paradise.  Then the – we would go down there for their events so, uh, we worked very well together that way and that way we had many more recreational type of things.

Virginia Cornett:	[0:15:27] Some of the, some of the types of things you offered?  What was the typical recreational program for 1 week?

Virginia Emrich:	Well, I might start at the beginning of a day.  One of them, this, this sounds peculiar, but, uh, uh, we had a third house that was called Ludoma, L-u-d-o-m-a, in which there was a kitchen, kind of like a Dutch kitchen.  And if any of the men didn’t get down to breakfast on time, it was the Red Cross girls’ duty to go and fix them a little, little breakfast of some sort, whatever we had.  It might be just toast and, and coffee or tea or once in a while we’d get hold of an egg or something of that sort, but – and that was a chatty, nice, relaxed moment in the morning.

We had bicycles.  We could go about 14 miles on flat land, and that was as much as most of us could make on a bicycle anyway.  And then we had, um, access to horses.  We had a nice group of riding horses and trails to ride over.  We had access to a golf course, a short golf course, not 18 holes.  I think it was 9 holes.  And, um, we had access to tennis courts there in the town.  The beach, of course, was always there with guards on duty, that is army, American Army guards on duty most of the day.  We had a river which was about a half a mile away from, um, Surfers Paradise and we chartered boats there for boat rides, particularly night rides were so enjoyable, and we went to a little island where we would have hot dog roasts and marshmallow roasts and that sort of thing.  We invited the girls from the neighboring town to come for these events.

Also, every Saturday night, the navy club, which was 1 block away and had the plush hotel in the area already, allowed us to use their, uh, dance hall facilities.  So we – they furnished the band, we furnished the girls.  And we spent all day, uh, Saturday making sandwiches and hors d’oeuvres and also everyone we could get hold of, flowers, corsages for the young ladies that we had invited from the town through the mayor.

And, um, there was, of course, the usual thing, we played cribbage, played games with them, sewed their insignia on them, write letters for them if they couldn’t, or just sit and talk to them.  And once in a while we got a bus together and went to neighboring towns, er, that had some interest site, historical site, something of that sort.  I had 1 day a week off and, uh, most of the time – or I wouldn’t say most of the time, but half the time I stayed right there at the beach because I enjoyed the beach so much.

But there came a time when I myself became a patient in one of the base hospitals.  I caught a cold going cross country in the United States which stayed with me all the way until I got to Australia.  In Australia then it settled in with sore throats and earaches and such things as that and soon I found that I was having a Eustachian tube problem so I would go into Brisbane.  Uh, there was [inaudible 0:19:20] for checkups and they were kind to take care of my allergies as well as this cold as well as the Eustachian tube.

In Brisbane, where General MacArthur was established, I got to meet his wife, his son, the [inaudible 0:19:39] and the general, and they came as guests to the club.  Whenever the general had to go down the coastline to visit some of the other army and – well, there were events going on and, and camps set up for things that we were not supposed to know about for future invasion purposes, but Mrs. MacArthur and her son would drop out of the car when General MacArthur came by and come in [inaudible 0:20:14], come into the club, and we would give them dressing rooms and they would go down and spend most of the day on the beach.  They would eat there.  But that was one of the enjoyable moments of being there at the, the camp.

These men who came to these 2 places – and I did work in, in both of them.  I was, uh, at Surfers, no, I was at Southport about 3 months and then I was sent down to Surfers Paradise after that because I was needed there.  One of the girls’ staff members had left.  We also had Admiral Halsey drop in for a dance at the na-, the – I had a chance to see a lot of people who really had been in the battle, but we were told not to discuss battle with our men.  Most of them didn’t want to talk about it.  They won’t talk about it and so I really knew very little.  I would say all Red Cross personnel there knew very little about what was going on up in the islands.  And, and we had to work and, and our hours were about, our duty was about 12 hours’ duty.  We did take the time to change our clothes in the afternoon and freshen up for the nighttime duties and, uh, we did eat in the club.  We had very good food so we weren’t skimp on that at all.  In March and April, there was a push up to Hollandia all…

Virginia Cornett:	[0:21:48] Was that – what year was that, Virginia, in March/April?

Virginia Emrich:	It’s still 19-, oh, 1944.

Virginia Cornett:	1944.

Virginia Emrich:	And, uh, all the men were called in from the clubs, so the Red Cross personnel were left high and dry.  And, um, we started doing a few things on our own.  And one of the surprises I got when the director of Surfers Paradise Club, Red Cross personnel that is, who was Lady [Coot, Emily Coot 0:22:20].  I learned to love her.  I met her back in Washington, came – went over on the ship with her and was assigned with her.

She and I went to the cinema down about a block away from the club just for something to do.  And their cinema was quite different.  It was almost like an open-air thing with just a tent over it and seats that you sat in, your knees came up and met your chin practically.  And it was very cold because this was the beginning of the cold time over there.  Lady [Coot 0:22:53] and I were sitting, watching the newsreel and there we appeared on the news.  When we were in Red Cross, um, at the American University class, Madeleine Carroll, the movie star, also was in that class and the papers got word that she was there and they burst into the classroom, just [inaudible 0:23:23] where is Madeleine?  They were rude and rough and everything else, so the teachers and the Red Cross personnel which were following behind them got them out of the room, made a bargain with them that if Madeleine Carroll gave them a half a day of her time, uh, would they leave her alone the rest of the time she was there.  She was just like anybody else.  She was a Red Cross person being trained for overseas work and it was agreeable with both parties.  Well, they sat Madeleine up in the front row.  She wasn’t up there and I happened to be in the front row myself though and so they took the pictures, uh, facing the class and there I was and Lady [Coot 0:24:08] was close behind us.

So we yell and scream.  There were so few of us in the show.  Stop the picture, stop the picture.  They didn’t, but afterwards we went, I went up and talked to the man running the, the, um, motion picture reel, asked if we could get a, a picture of that or clip of it or something.  He said he’d try, but we never did.  But Madeleine Carroll [inaudible 0:24:35] with her story that day.  She was very gracious to them.  She did everything they wanted her to do.  They wanted her in uniform.  Well, we hadn’t been issued uniforms, so one of the Red Cross supervisors took off her uniform so Madeleine could put one on and pose in it.  It wasn’t a good fit, but it was good enough.  Also, they wanted Madeleine packing her suitcase or packing her – no, the biggest thing, a trunk.  They wanted something huge.  Well, she didn’t have a trunk, but they grabbed somebody else’s trunk and they used it as a prop and took pictures of Madeleine doing all these things, which, uh, was normal sometime or other but not at that time.  They had been faked up and all, but anyway, that was a moment of rest and leisure, uh, that we remembered at that time.

	The – uh, on Tuesday, June 6, the radio announced that the second front was open and the invasion of [inaudible 0:25:42] France.  Well, that, of course, meant something thus we felt kind of closer to the whole World War at that time, the other, the people working on the other side as well as those people in the Pacific we were fighting.  And it was extremely cold.  That was the month of June and they didn’t have central heating down there.  And I had asked to go to the Pacific because I do not like cold weather.  Well, their short winter is very severe though I found out and we managed.  By the way, I was wearing all Australian uni-, Red Cross uniform at this time because I still did not have, uh, my footlocker and, um, but, um, I managed to pass muster from the, the American Red Cross office.  They said it was all right for me to wear what they saw me wearing then.

And, um, another little note of item.  One day, uh, this was July 15, 1944, I went into a book shop in Southport and there I saw a book written by a former teacher of mine, Boyd Martin, who was head of the theater department at the University of Louisville.  He had written a book called American Drama and Stage and a bookshop had it and so I bought one and, of course, I let everybody in the bookstore know that I knew the man and it sort of made a celebrity of me.  Anyway, I sent that copy back to Boyd Martin and he was very interested in where it came from.  I think he saved the wrapping and the postmark, uh, and he thought more of that than he did receiving a copy of his own book, but he got a kick out of it.  And I, all that time I was still troubled with my ear.  I was fighting that because I ended up, I might as well say, in, uh, in deafness in one ear as a result of my service overseas.

Another event that occurred that, uh, might be interesting to recall is that [Marge Dowling 0:27:59] who was a Red Cross girl had become engaged to [Bill McMaster 0:28:03] who was an army officer.  But Bill was – at the time they set their wedding date, Bill happened to be in the midst of battle in one of the islands up in the Pacific and, uh, but Marge went ahead and made plans.  She borrowed a wedding dress from an Australian girl.  I borrowed a bridesmaid outfit (because I was going to be the bridesmaid) from an Australian girl and, uh, Bill was going to bring his best man.

When he arrived, they went to the cathedral, it was a catholic cathedral in Brisbane, and said they wanted to be married the next day, they said the next day.  The priest said “All right.  We’ll do it.  You’re service people and it’s something unusual and we’ll do it without a mass or anything big, just your party and such as that.  Now, let me see your orders.”  Bill said “Oh, I have no orders.”  “You have no written…?”  “No.  I came right out of battle and I was given a word of mouth consent.”  “Well, we can’t, uh, marry you.”  Well, I went to the phone immediately and called everything off, called all the people who were coming to the wedding and I said “Just hold.  Sit tight until I find out what’s going to happen, but the service is off this morning.”  And also had to call the people who were baking the cake and, um, I said “I think maybe you better go ahead and bake the cake, but I don’t know when to tell you to deliver it.”  And called the house where we had decorated the hall and said “We want you to keep that hall for us all day long if you can because this wedding at the moment is, is being held up.”

So [Bill McMaster 0:29:52], his bride-to-be, and myself went to the cable, um, office and Bill started cabling back up the line to get permission or to find his [inaudible 0:30:08] officer who was in battle up there and have him cable something, orders for the marriage.  It took about 4 hours of just sitting there and pumping cables back there, back and answer this one and so forth.  Finally, Bill had a piece of paper and we went to the priest.  And I got to the telephone again and told everybody to come on immediately to the wedding, called everything else, said “It’s just postponed by 4 hours, but it’s on again.”  They came.  We had the – oh, but we didn’t have time.  The priest said well, you got to get here before such and such because I have something else definitely planned.  She did not have time to put her wedding dress on.  I did not have time to get in my bridesmaid dress so she got – we were both in our American Red Cross uniforms at her wedding.  And, um, we had a very short ceremony, went back to the house, small reception.

And, um, then I went back to the club at Surfers Paradise and a few days later found out that one of the 3 buildings which the Red Cross ran for servicemen was to be turned over to nurses, WACs, Red Cross women who would come from New Guinea and other places around, um, on leave.  So, um, now we were serving the women as well as the men.

And also in August, the same month, my footlocker arrived.  And it was just like Christmas when I opened it up because I had forgotten so many of the things that I had put into it.  And I could get into the official Red Cross uniform now and discard the Australian Red Cross uniform.

At that time also, General MacArthur and his wife and son were still visiting the clubs and using our beaches and, um, he was still working with training troops down at a place called Beaudesert.  Uh, these men were going into what was they were told was hazardous service, but slowly all the men were moving north into battle and getting ready for the Philippines invasion, which took place October 20.

And, um, I remember on the day after the Philippines had been invaded and we got the word about it that Captain Lanny Ross, who was in special services, came down to attend a dance that we had at [inaudible 0:33:15] and to spend a week there on leave.  He was a very interesting person and a very nice personality, easy to get to know and get along with.  And when he returned to Brisbane, where he was based at that time, he offered me a ride as I was going into the hospital for treatment for my ear and it was a memorable ride because he sang songs just for the pure love of it and joy of singing on our way to Brisbane.

And, and later on that month I was rewarded with leave and so I went down to Sydney for 1 week where I visited various Red Cross girls that I had come over from the United States with and knew they were based down there.  And while I was enjoying myself down there I met a – we, well, we called ourselves relatives, but we couldn’t figure out exactly where the ties were, but met a [inaudible 0:34:23] Steve Emrich Jr.  He was from Cleveland, Ohio.  And being a sailor, of course, one of the joys for him was to take a ride on a, on this very large sailboat out in the harbor in Sydney and he asked me to go along.  That was my first experience sailboat riding.  I had no idea you moved as often as you did on sailboats.

When I returned to work at Surfers Paradise, I became conscious of an antiaircraft training school which was down in the beach several miles from us because their guns were booming, their searchlights were playing at night, and planes were flying car-, some of them carrying targets, and realized that very shortly these men would be put into battle beyond the Philippines even.  And, um, on November 23, when the army celebrated Thanksgiving Day, it was kind of a farewell party also because the men realized that, uh, they would  not be stationed close by or would not be sent back to Australia on leaves very shortly.  And I also at the end of that month received word that, um, I would be sent to Darwin, Australia, up in the Northern Territory, and I began to be outfitted in G.I. attire.  I wondered why, but after I got, got up to Darwin, I realized how necessary that garb was.

And on November 30, we had another Thanksgiving Day celebrated and that was the navy’s day.  Um, for some reason or other they couldn’t quite agree, but we enjoyed having double celebrations.  And, uh, at that time I ran into a boy who had been a neighbor of mine for several years who was in the navy and came down to celebrate the navy’s Thanksgiving Day at their hotel.  And, um, that particular time we had a dance also at the navy club in honor of the Thanksgiving Day and I went with John and, um, not as a date because we could not have dates at the time of the dances, but he just came down and escorted me about a block from my house to the navy club.  And, um, I had an unfortunate experience because he opened the gate for me and I caught my finger in it and I had a smashed finger for about 2 weeks.

On Wednesday, December 6, 1944, I left, um, the, I left [inaudible 0:37:47] and Ludoma and Southport and Surfers Paradise and flew by Qantas to Darwin, Australia.  We started out about 5:45 in the morning and arrived up there about 6:15.  We stopped once to, um, gas up I guess.  I don’t really know why.  We may have, I believe we did pick up, uh, a passenger somewhere along the line there.

And based on Darwin were the 49th Air Depot Group, the 528th Squadron, 380th Bomb Group was close by, and the Naval Base 245.  And I was assigned to the navy recreation hall, which consisted of 2 Quonset huts and, uh, put together in the form of an L.  And there were about 315 men on the base.  And they had formerly had a Red Cross girl running the rec hall, but she had become engaged to an Australian officer and returned to the United States to be married.  But they’d been without, um, anybody in their rec hall for quite some time and in the meantime the men had let their beards grow, um, they’d given up wearing shirts, they cut off their trousers and, and wore real baggy looking things, and generally kind of let themselves go in appearance.  Well, when I went to work at the club, unbeknownst to me though, the navy commander decided that all the beards had to be shaven, that shirts would be worn except when they were working, and no more cutting off their trousers, and in other words to shape up.  Um, I was blamed for this for a while, but I could finally convince the boys I had nothing to do with it at all.  I hadn’t expressed any opinions about it.  It was just the, uh, their commander’s idea.

The Quonset huts were divided up into active places and not so active places.  That is, one of the Quonset huts had the, um, table games and, uh, pool games and, uh, various things of that sort; whereas in the other Quonset hut we had a library, we had a Victrola for – and I mean a Victrola, the crank-up type, and records to play, and the sit-down games; and the counter where Joe (their expression for coffee) was served and whenever we could get it Coca Cola or cordial and once in a while popcorn and such things as that.  The, uh, men there on the navy base for the most part had seen service of various types.  They were based at Darwin to service ships and submarines that would come in.  Uh, they had – there was a mine assembly depot there from which the, um, ships could be, um, serviced with the ammunition that was needed.  Also, there were parts for the ships and there were men who were trained to, uh, apply these parts and to repair the ships and that sort of thing.  Also, there were a group of men who for one reason or other had been unhappy in service that had, had trouble.  Some of them had been, um, behind bars and, um, had been troublemakers, so they were put there.

After I was there about 6 weeks, one of the commanders told me that he was going to send me a treat, not just myself but the, the 3 girls, the 3 Red Cross girls with whom I lived also a treat because of the handling of the men that had been troublemakers who now seemed to be much happier and of a more peaceful nature and he gave me the [inaudible 0:42:58].  I don’t really know, but I tried hard to keep things going that were exciting as much as possible in the, um, rec halls, different competitions, sharing things with all of us.  And, um, the treat that he sent us was breakfast in bed.  One morning he, uh, told us that he was going to send some men over with the breakfast in bed, so earlier the 3 Red Cross girls and I got up and prettied ourselves up, put on our best robes, etc., and makeup and such and pretty soon a jeep came with food and trays, covers for the food.  It was really quite fancy, a flower on each tray.  And so we jumped – we had been out of bed, we jumped back in bed and let the, the corpsmen serve us and then they took off, went back to the kitchen or whatever.  And we got out of bed, brought our food into a center room which is the core of the house where we lived, and had breakfast together after they had gone.

Another treat that one of the other commanders, uh, sent to me in appreciation for what he expressed as good work at, in the rec hall, um, he sent me a box full of, of cosmetic things such as hair shampoo and, uh, a special kind of scented soaps, hand lotion, the sort of things that certainly could not get up there.  And I later found out that this commander had written to his wife and asked her to send these things over to him, and it was certainly a welcome treat.

One of the first projects I had to undertake when I got up in Darwin was to put on a dance.  The men decided that for some reason that since I was from Kentucky, I must know something about square dancing and hillbilly music.  I didn’t tell them that I didn’t know anything about it, but I thought, well, there are ways of finding out.  And I learned there was a nu-, there were a number of musicians there on the navy base and they did know how to play hillbilly music and they did know how to play for square dances.  Also, I was lucky enough to, to find out that one of the musicians could call square dancing and was willing to take it over, so I learned from him a few of the, the, uh, figures and the dances and went ahead and we set a date for it, invited all the Red Cross girls and some of the Australian WACs who were situated close by.  There was quite a, a large group of Australian service people, both men and women, not too far so we did invite some of the, uh, service women and they came.

We had on the basketball court a light set up.  This was outside.  And we had our first dance, or my first dance up there, which the fellows decided it was a success.  I often wondered about it.  But we got through the night steaming.  I had never attended a dance or had anything to do with so much physical effort up in the tropics where Darwin was, was situated.  After 5 minutes of dancing, everybody would be soaked.  Their uniforms were sticking to them, but that didn’t stop anything.  Things went on and we just muddled through.  That was the beginning of a number of dances not just for the naval base but the other groups around, uh, would have dances and, um, would invite 2 representatives, that is 2 men from each of the other, the bomb groups, the air depot group, the navy group, along with the Red Cross girls to their dances as representatives from these different units.  Also, there was the 86th General Hospital which was about 5 miles away from Darwin and th-, they would have personnel invited from there and the Red Cross girl from there also.  And also I was able to continue with my treatment for my ears without too much trouble.

I learned how to shoot a gun for the first time in my life.  Uh, the, some of the men decided I should learn how to use a .45 revolver and they had a practice area not too far away from the clubs or from the rec halls and they took me out there on several occasions and I learned.  I don’t say I ever became good, but at least I overcame my fear for firearms.

It seemed like I was destined to have trouble with clothes and uniforms all during my stay, uh, in the Pacific.  My footlocker again was a little late in arriving.  It just had not come on the same plane that I came in so, um, I got it about 10 days later, it was shipped to me.  But also I, um, had some clothes that were taken off of a clothesline in back of the, the cottage where, uh, 4 of the Red Cross girls were based.  And we used to do our laundry and hang them out in the backyard on lines that were strung up between the house and our outside facilities.  There were no inside plumbing to take care of the restrooms, the toilets.  That was at the back of all the yards of all the houses where the officers and Red Cross girls were based, but our backyard was used as a shortcut between the, um, 49th Air Depot Group and their rec hall and the, uh, movie area where all the army people were shown outdoor movies at night.  And I’m sure that some of those men walking through depleted the line, the clothesline.  Also, because, uh, among the missing pieces was a bathing suit and one day on one of the beaches close by I saw an Australian girl wearing my bathing suit.  I, of course, didn’t say anything.  I didn’t want to embarrass her and I never would have found out who was responsible for it anyway, so I just sat there and gritted my teeth and requested another bathing suit and some more underwear from home.

The navy, uh, base was not too busy a place and the enlisted men spent lots of time in the rec hall.  I put in about, oh, about 12 hours a day by putting in morning hours, taking 2 hours off in the middle of the afternoon when most people did take a siesta of some sort because it got so miserably hot, and then coming back and being there until about 10:00 at night.  Among the recreations that they had were outdoor movies for the navy also.  And on the nights they had the movies, I could tell in advance there were going to be a movie because my, uh, chairs out of the club start disappearing.  The boys would take them out one by one and use them that night, bring them back the next morning, because they had otherwise to sit on the ground or some hard wooden benches.  I got accustomed.  At first it upset me, but the chairs always came back so I decided I had to, I had to accept this way for them.

The rains came about the, the middle of December in Darwin and I soon found out that the Red Cross issued raincoat was not good for tropical storms so I got hold of a G.I. raincoat and managed.

As far as uniforms in Australia went, it was mostly G.I. clothes because there were mosquitos up there and it was very muddy at times, also the weeds were high.  The seasons were wet and dry there.  And in the wet season, things just grew up beyond your imagination.  In the dry season, all these things would be cut down and some control was tried for the mosquitos and the insects around, but in the daytime you could wear your sleeves rolled up.  These were olive drab uniforms that we were wearing from the regular army type of shirts and sometimes culottes and, um, or even shorts.  Of course, the shorts in those days were not the short shorts, they were the long just above the knee type things.  But we wore G.I. shoes for the most part, the lace-up type, because that was the only practical thing for Darwin.  And in the evening though we had to button up the shirts at the neck and at the sleeves, be sure that the, um, shirt was tucked in to the, our pants because we had to wear pants at night to cover up our ankles and socks that would, um, also be a help to cover up the feet and because of the mosquitos and because of the danger of Dengue fever and malaria.

Darwin was the only place in Australia that was bombed and, uh, where there were buildings that were razed and, and, um, torn down and, uh, bombed out.  There were some shelters or some pillboxes that were built along the beaches also to prevent any landing there.  They never, the, the Japanese, of course, were the enemy that they feared and there never was a landing there, not in any great numbers of any sort, but they did have, they were bombed from the air and also from ships off the coastline.

The, uh, beaches were nice beaches to look at, but they were not safe to swim from because of the stingrays that were so bad up there, so periodically I would find trucks that would transport the boys to an inner lake and, um, it was about, oh, I guess about 20 miles inland and it was called Mica Beach.  And there was another beach that was called Casuarina Beach, but, um, we did not swim off of Casuarina Beach.  We would have, have picnics down there and that’s where the, the pillboxes mostly were built and we would go up and take pictures around those and it was quite a point of interest.

The, um, boys based there were not very friendly at time to visiting crews.  These ships would come into Darwin, our submarines.  And the crew, not having been there before, the crews were released for land leave supposedly, but they didn’t know that there was nothing in Darwin for them to do.  They would come in their uniform, their dress uniforms and looking spick and span and walk down the streets of Darwin to find nothing but a, a few rec buildings, former restaurants, hotels, banks, and such as that.  They kept on going.  They would eventually come to one of the, the bases out of the army or the navy and they were always directed to go on to the navy base and eventually they came to the recreation halls.  When they walked in they were a disappointed group always.  And, um, the boys who were based there regularly would sort of rise up and didn’t like this invasion.  But after a time we had amicable relations because we discussed, that is the boys that were based on the, on the, uh, at Navy 245 and I and some of the commanding officers discussed it and we decided that, uh, we could help those crewmembers by being hospitable to them and extending any facilities we had.  We even got to the point that later on we got together competitive type of, of games.  We had picnics together.  We took the visiting crewmembers to the lake inland and we also managed, we’d usually manage to scrape up enough food for a picnic lunch and that way, uh, we had some fun times together and patched up the feelings that there had been originally when outsiders appeared.

One group that came to Darwin and for whom I had to plan something to get their minds off of their job was a group of “gravediggers.”  These men had been at Adelaide River, uh, which wasn’t too far from Darwin, and they had been digging graves for men who had died out in the Pacific and had not been interned permanently anywhere and Adelaide River had been declared as a regular burial place for American service people.  So, uh, we, we had special movies for them.  We had special games.  We tried to get special eats for them.  And, uh, we collected over a number of months some instruments and, musical instruments that is, that the boys themselves could handle anytime they wanted and so we had jam sessions.  And, um, it proved to be a helpful time for these so-called gravediggers.  End of side 2, tape 1, for interview of Virginia Emrich.


/mlc